Lobotomized

Tammy thought she met the man of her dreams when she started dating Joseph Oberhansley. He was younger than her and she found him handsome. But when he slowly became controlling and she discovered the secret of his horrible past she broke it off. Only then did Joe reveal his true self and Tammy never stood a chance.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Patrolman McGhee picks up his mic and responds to dispatches
call at two fifty two am, please respond to Locuste
for domestic dispute. Frightened Tammy Blaton tells the dispatcher her
ex boyfriend Joe is knocking on the door and walking
back and forth from the front of the house to

(00:29):
the back, talking about being a god. McGee picks up
his pace. His cruiser roars through the streets en route
to Locus Street, another typical third shift. He thinks to himself.
Dispatch interrupts his thought with news that the ex boyfriend
has escalated his behavior. The woman on the phone describes

(00:51):
him ragefully kicking the back door. The dispatcher relays the
woman's situation in real time. He has threatened her in
the past. She suspects he's schizophrenic. McGee arrives and notes
the time seven minutes since the call. He parks on

(01:12):
the street and gets out of his cruiser. He hangs
his hands on his hips as he approaches the house.
Movement from the side of the house catches his attention
and he turns to look. He sees a man in
a blue shirt, obviously frustrated his eyes are squinted with
a furrowed brow, his mouth twisted into a frown. McGhee

(01:35):
gets his attention, talks to him and explains why he's there.
Joe tries to explain his side of things, but he's
so angry, so frustrated, he just can't articulate his thoughts.
But Trawlman McGee keeps his distance as Joe starts slamming
his fist into his hand while pacing the front porch.

(02:00):
He claims he owns the house and the boat in
the driveway, but while he was at work, his girlfriend
changed the locks. Just then another officer arrives. McGee was
happy for the backup, but kept his attention on Joe.
The other officer went inside to talk with Tammy. She

(02:22):
tells him Joe is her ex, but she doesn't want
him coming around anymore, so she had her dad changed
the locks. When she explained Joe had lived there for
nearly a month and a half, the officer stopped her.
He explained that by law, Joe had established a residence there.
Isn't that funny just by being there, he had his

(02:45):
belongings and even his car in the backyard. He explained
there was a proper way to get him out, but
that it wasn't just by changing the locks, and that
it wouldn't just happen overnight. When the other officer exits
the house, McGhee confers with him. They both approach Joe
and tell him that it is three in the morning

(03:07):
and nothing is going to be accomplished tonight. They recommend
hed come back later and work things out. Joe reluctantly
agrees and gets in his suv and leaves. McGhee lingers momentarily,
then circles the block just to make sure he doesn't return.

(03:55):
Welcome to Sword and Scale Nightmares True Crime. Bedtime where
nightmare begins Now. Brenda self is startled awake, trying to

(04:22):
blink away the blurriness in her eyes. She realizes her
sun is in her bedroom. His dark figure is motionless
in the pale blue light filtering through the blinds. He
says he needs to talk. She rolls over with a
tired sigh and looks at the alarm clockets three point
thirty in the morning. She pushes herself up in bed

(04:44):
and reaches for the bedside lamp, where a click, the
room is basked in a warm yellow glow. What do
you need to talk about, she asks him, but she
already knows. Ever since he and his girlfriend broke up
a couple of days before, he had been coming over
a lot. She listens as he tells her how upset

(05:06):
he is that his girlfriend broke up with him. She
hangs on his every word as he tells her she
changed the locks and won't even talk to him. She
rubs the sleep from her eye and confesses he even
went to her work and tried to talk to her,
but was asked to leave. Brenda knows that has been

(05:28):
weighing heavily on his mind, between that and losing his job.
She hasn't seen him this upset since. She quickly pushes
the memory out of her mind, not wanting to relive
the past. She tries to console him, tries to help
him understand everything will be all right, but he's frustrated.

(05:50):
A pitiful look crosses her face as he leaves the room.
She can see he's upset and her heartaches for her child.
She reaches for the lamp and turns off the light
when she hears a car door shut in a rush.
She throws the sheets back, adorns a robe and hurries outside,

(06:13):
she sees her son sitting in his suv. She wraps
her arms around her body, clutching the robe tight, and
walks to the passenger door. She opens the door and
gets inside, but her son doesn't move an inch. She
asks him if he's okay. He doesn't answer, his eyes

(06:34):
staring off into the distance. She raises her voice hey
and reaches for his head. He never changes his gaze,
but he does respond. She tries to offer him advice,
but nothing seems to put his worry at ease. For
a few moments, she tries to convince him that the

(06:56):
world is not against him. Hard thing to get someone
to believe when the opposite is often true. He listens,
but she can tell it isn't making him feel better.
She sits there for a lingering moment and just holds
his hand, not knowing what else to do. Then she

(07:18):
gets out and watches as he puts the car in
gear and backs down the driveway. She hopes he's going
to be okay. As she goes back inside, turns off
her lamp and lays back into her comfortable bed. She
hopes nothing bad happens Like last time Tammy met Joe

(08:10):
Oberhansley during the spring of twenty fourteen. Joe was thirty
three with little to his name. He had a menial
job at a car dealership and lived with his mother.
But Tammy was a caring person with no children and
didn't mind a fixer upper. When she recognized a man
in need, I can fix him. She thought she'd been

(08:34):
married four times before, but was sure this guy would
be different. For some reason. He was a whirlwind relationship,
and by late June, Joe had moved some of his
things into her home and began staying overnight often. But
when Tammy's friends at work asked about him, she admittedly

(08:54):
knew very little. They had talked about his past, but
he was always very vague. One friend, Tanya, recommended searching
for his name on the internet. Isn't that a Tanya
thing to do? Jemmy typed his name Joseph Oberhansley into
the search bar and she pressed enter. In seconds, the

(09:18):
screen was full of results. Oh, that's interesting. The reflection
of the bright screen in her eyes grows as they
widen in shock, and she reads headline after headline. This
can't be true, she says out loud. She barely moves

(09:39):
as Tanya impatiently turns the laptop to face her. Oh
my god, she exclaims, snapping Tammy out of her temporary shock.
Her and Tanya's surprised faces meet as she turns the
laptop back around and clicks on the first link. Slowly,
her mouth falls the gape as she reads. A seventeen

(10:02):
year old Joe comes home to find his five day
old baby in his mother's arms. He then turns his
attention to Sabrina Elder, his baby's mama. Just looking at her,
he feels anger rise in him. His mind races. He
regrets ever getting her pregnant and hates the fact that
now she thinks she can live in his house with
his family. He starts pacing up and down the hallway

(10:26):
with his anger writhing inside of him. Suddenly, he reaches
into his bag, pulls out a loaded handgun, points it
directly at Sabrina, and pulls the trigger. The gun recoils
in his hand. He can smell the burnt gunpowder as
he pulls the trigger again and again. His mother quickly
puts the baby down and rushes to help Sabrina. Her

(10:49):
body slides out of the chair she was just in
and crumples onto the floor. Even with his mother shielding Sabrina,
Joe doesn't stop. The gun releases two more resounding bangs,
hitting his mother in the back, damaging her kidney and liver,
and in the arm, shattering her bone. As soon as

(11:12):
the shooting started and his mother put the baby down,
his sister picked him up and ran from the home.
Joe saw her spun around and shot at her, but
narrowly missed. Sabrina lay under his mother dead from a
gunshot wound to the head. His grandmother, Norma, ran from

(11:32):
the kitchen to see what was going on, just in
time to see Joe place the gun under his chin,
lock eyes with her, and pulled the trigger. He would
survive the self inflicted gunshot wound after spending three weeks
in the coma. The bullet lodged in his frontal lobe,

(11:52):
effectively giving him a partial lobotomy. The bottomies were once
touted as a miracle surgery eighteen seventy, treating and curing
a myriad of inflictions from homosexuality to schizophrenia. We have
a lot more of that these days, and a lot
less lobotomies. As you can probably tell, Joe would be

(12:14):
convicted of manslaughter for the death of Sabrina and attempted
a murder for shooting his mom. He would spend thirteen
years of his life in prison, being released two years
shy of his fifteen year sentence. Not long after his release,
he would move to Indiana to be with his mother,
who had long since forgiven him for some reason. There

(12:37):
he would serve out the remainder of his parole, but
just before it was due to run out, they met Tammy.
Tammy slams the laptop shut. She doesn't want to read anymore.
She turns to Tanya and tells her this doesn't change anything.
He was just a kid back then, she explains changed.

(13:01):
She gets up from the table, eager to change the subject,
but she can tell that Tanya doesn't want to. In
the months to follow, Tanya and others noticed Joe slowly
taking control of Tammy's life. They all told her it
was going to happen, and now it is. She became
withdrawn and saw her friends less and less. She only

(13:24):
saw Joe. He even gave himself access to her Facebook
accounts so he could monitor her activity. It would take
a couple more months before Tammy saw what exactly made
her friend suspicious of Joe. In early September, her company
held a picnic at an amusement park. Tammy took Joe,

(13:45):
and by all accounts, they were a happy couple. But
the following Monday, at work, Tammy would ask a coworker
for help. She confided in her coworker that Joe had
raped her all weekend and wouldn't let her leave the house.
She packed cloth in a computer bag. When Joe was distracted,
she didn't want him to know she intended to break

(14:05):
up with him. Her friend would let her stay at
her house. That night, Joe called and Tammy answered. Tammy
picks up the phone and slides her finger across the
screen to answer it. Before she even says hello, she
presses the speaker icon so her coworker can listen in.

(14:26):
She watches her coworker's expression flash between shock, anger, and
empathy when he openly admits he raped her. Tammy mouths
the words I told you. She tells Joe it's over.
In a demanding voice. She says, no one, and I
mean no one gets to terrify me the way you

(14:48):
did this Sunday. I will never forget that as long
as I live. She tells him to get his stuff
and get the fuck out of her house. I added
the fo by the way. Joe begs and pleads for
her to just let him come get her so they
can talk and he can manipulate her, but she wisely refuses.

(15:12):
She disconnects the call with a newfound confidence. She feels
good after breaking it off. She feels free. The next day,
at work, all the color rushed from Tammy's face when
she turned around at her desk to see Joe. Her
manager had to ask him to leave before calling the police.

(15:35):
She stayed with her coworker the next night. Also the
following day, her dad changed the locks on her house,
and that night she felt safe enough to go home.
She texted her coworker that evening at the end of
my day, I am claiming my life back. I worked
too hard to get here. No one will take me down.

(15:58):
Her experience with Joe left her feeling like a survivor,
with renewed promise of a full life ahead. But just
to be safe, she locked all the windows and doors,
and she wedged a chair under the back door knob.
Six hours later, at three a m. She would call
the police because Joe was banging on the back door.

(16:21):
The following morning, her coworker arrived at work, but Tammy
wasn't there. She waited until nine, but still Tammy was
a no show. She began texting and calling her repeatedly,
but got no answer. She called her from a work
phone and someone picked up. The voice on the other

(16:42):
end said they were Tammy's brother and she was with
her dad, who had a medical emergency overnight. The coworker
called another friend of Tammy and she tried calling her,
but when she heard the voice on the other end
of the phone, she knew immediately it wasn't her brother.
When she asked, where's Tammy, the voice pretended not to

(17:05):
know what they were talking about and said they had
the wrong number. That's when they decided to call the
police for a welfare check. By ten am, officers were
knocking on Tammy's door. The first thing that Captain Pavee
does when he arrives at Tammy's house is run the
plates on the SUV in the driveway. It only takes

(17:29):
a few seconds before the squawk from his radio confirms
it is Tammy's. He walks down the driveway passing the
vehicle and the boat behind it, before turning and walking
up the steps to the front porch. He hears another
officer's footsteps fade as he checks the back of the house.
Pavee raises his fist and wraps on the glass storm door.

(17:54):
He waits, but there's no answer. The storm door squeaks
as he opens it to knock on the main door.
He knocks and then listens. He can't hear any movement
inside the house. The silence is broken when the officer
in the back radios that the back door is ajar.

(18:14):
Both officers feel a sudden sense of dread come over them,
making the hairs on the back of their necks stand up.
Pavee nearly jumps when the front door finally swings open. Inside,
he can make out the figure of a white male
standing a few feet from the storm door. He says

(18:35):
his name is Joe and that Tammy is not here.
Pavee asks him whose car is in the driveway and
knows that he's lying when he claims it's his. He
asks Joe to come outside. It's hard to hear through
the door. Joe reaches out to open the storm door

(18:56):
when Pavee sees a fresh wound on his knuckle. Joe
steps outside between the two officers. Payvee already doesn't trust
him after he knows he's lied, He notices he seems
slow to answer their questions, like he's making up an
answer on the spot. He says he left his ida

(19:18):
at work and wants us to go there with him
to get it. Payvee finds his eagerness to leave the
home suspicious. The other officer, feeling the same suspicion, asks
Joe to put his hands on the house and let
them pat him down. When the officer mentions a pat down,
Payvee sees Joe tense up, take a step back and

(19:42):
slightly reach for his back pocket. Payvee acts quickly and
grabs his wrist with one hand, pushing him towards the
house with the other. In his back pocket was a
folding knife. The knife, with a handle that doubled his
brass knuckles, was covered in blood and blonde hair. Officers

(20:05):
entered the home and yelled for Tammy. As they walked
through the home, they noticed dried blood on light switches
and door knobs. The back door, still in the locked position,
had been busted open, leaving broken trim on the floor.
As they walked down the hall, they noticed the bathroom
door was also busted open. Inside the bathroom, even in

(20:28):
the dark, they could tell there was blood everywhere, and
in the tub was a bloody mound of some kind.
The mound was draped in a camper's tent. Lifting the
tent would reveal the crushed skull of Tammy Blanton. Processing

(20:49):
the scene would reveal even more disturbing details. The front
part of Tammy's skull had been cut open and part
of her brain removed, and the tub mixed with the
blood or brain matter and pieces of skull. Her throat
was slashed or stabbed so many times it looked like

(21:11):
one big cut. The left side of her chest had
a large wound, large enough to see her organs. Later,
the autopsy revealed that, in addition to portions of her brain,
part of her lung and heart were also missing. In
the kitchen they found a fork, spoon, knife, and plate

(21:32):
with bits of skull and blood on it. On the
stove was a skillet and a pair of tongs with
blood on the handles. In the skillet was a burned
residue with a void in the middle where whatever had
been cooked was removed. In the dining room, on the

(21:55):
floor was a spread out tarp with bloody tools laid out.
Steak knife, a butcher's knife, a screwdriver, and an electric jigsaw,
all covered in blood. Detective Parker looks over his notes.

(22:39):
The details coming from the scene were pretty damning to
the man sitting across the table from him. He stares
at Joe and asks him why he is here. Joe
calmly replies he didn't have his identification on him when
the officer asked for it. What about Tammy, asks Parker.

(23:00):
Claims he's not seen her in a couple of days,
and that she stays at her dad's house or with friends.
Didn't you have contact with police this morning? Parker asks.
Joe denies any contact, as if you can deny reality.
Some criminals are just plain dumb, So is anyone that

(23:20):
denies reality. By the way, Parker leans forward and tells Joe,
I know you're lying. Joe replies, my name is Steve.
Parker's face turns perplexed, but he doesn't know how to respond.
He just blurts out, So you don't know Tammy's dead?

(23:41):
Joe nonchalantly replies, that's the first I've heard of it.
This is going to be a long day, Parker thinks. Eventually,
Joe would tell a very different story. He claimed he
went to Tammy's to talk, but when he arrived, there

(24:02):
were two black men already there. He claimed one attack
Tammy with a knife while the other held him at gunpoint.
Then they ran and Joe chased them but didn't catch them.
He thought Tammy and the two men were planning to
cut his head off and eat his brain, but the

(24:23):
men betrayed Timmy. When he returned to Tammy's, she was
already dead, so he placed a ten over her body,
but not before deciding to eat part of her brain
because she was already dead. So who cares right now?
If you believe that story, then I've got an NFT

(24:43):
to sell you. Parker's expression went blank. He leaned forward
once more and told Joe that story doesn't match the evidence.
It sounds made up. Joe only complained about his head tingling, exclaiming,
I'm like electrifying right now. Parker got up and left

(25:05):
the room. Frustrated. Of course, he let Joe stew for
a while, electrifying whatever the hell that means. While alone,
Joe seemed to talk to people that weren't there, saying
get back. Other times he would just make random buzzing noises.
I wish we had the video for this one. Parker

(25:28):
bursts back into the room and asks Joe, where's Tammy's heart?
I ate it, he said, it's part of me now.
But you didn't kill her, Parker questioned. Finally, Joe revealed
the truth. He said when he forced the back door open,
Tammy was already locked in the bathroom. Parker listened intently

(25:52):
as Joe went over the details. He said he already
had his knife in his hand and used it along
with little elbow grease to force open the bathroom door.
He stopped for a moment, looked Parker in the eye
and said, truth be told, like she really wasn't all
that scared. Surprisingly, then he detailed how she tried to

(26:16):
hit him, but he attacked her with a knife and
her body fell into the tub. He said he felt
like he had to kill her before she killed him.
He could hear her thoughts. Somehow, Joe would be charged
with murder, burglary, and rape. It would take six years

(26:39):
before he would make it a trial. Well, he made
it to trial once before, but because a witness revealed
information that was barred from the case, the judge declared
a mistrial. Then they couldn't find an untainted jury pool
to draw from. Everyone had seemingly heard of the crime already.
Between procedural delays, Joe was declared unfit to stand trial

(27:02):
and then had his competency restored three times. Sounds scientific.
Joe was prone to bizarre outbursts, claiming they had the
wrong man and his name was actually Zeus Brown. Yeah, yeah,
that's what he claimed. Later, he tried to fire his lawyers,

(27:25):
claiming they were trying to control his thoughts. Of course,
this is all part of the legal system, by the way,
dealing with crazy people who are seemingly everywhere these days.
Eventually Joe would reach an actual trial, though Joe refused
to let his defense team use the insanity defense, so

(27:48):
the prosecution took the death penalty off the table. Everyone
except Joe could see he was mentally ill. I mean,
it was friggin' obvious. When someone's mentally ill, they say
dumb shit that you shouldn't believe in. Just accept as fact.
The defense's only witness was Joe, and he took the

(28:08):
stand to explain his innocence, but after a few hours
of deliberation, the jury convicted him of murder and burglary,
but for some reason, not rape. There just wasn't enough
evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he raped
her in the process of murdering her. Sometimes juries can

(28:29):
be illogical, but during the sentencing, the jury took less
than an hour to decide he needed to be sentenced
to life in prison. Somehow they came to the right
conclusion after all quickly. Joe tried to appeal the decision,
but it was upheld. He'll spend the rest of his

(28:51):
life in prison. Tammy's horrible death still weighs heavily on
her family, to Joe's mom still stands by her son.
As for Joe's son, he was put up for adoption
after he killed his mother and went to prison. He

(29:13):
never saw him again, and hopefully he never will. If
you enjoyed the show, please consider joining plus at Sword
and Scale dot com slash plus, but if you can't,
consider leaving us a positive review on your preferred listening platform.

(29:36):
Sweet Dreams and Goodnight